Wednesday, July 12, 2017

"But the New York Times reports that Trump personally signed off on a statement that Trump Jr. released over the weekend, as reports of the meeting first surfaced, that told a very misleading story about what happened at it:

As Air Force One jetted back from Europe on Saturday … participants on the plane and back in the United States debated how transparent to be in the statement, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Ultimately, the people said, the president signed off on a statement from Donald Trump Jr. for The Times that was so incomplete that it required day after day of follow-up statements, each more revealing than the last.

The statement from Trump Jr. that the president signed off on only said that the meeting was primarily about 'a program about the adoption of Russian children.' This was before the Times disclosed that according to sources who had seen the email chain, it revealed that the meeting was really about sharing material about Hillary Clinton that came from the Russian government. That forced another statement from Trump Jr., in which he conceded that he had been offered information about Clinton but suggested he had no idea what the source of the information was. That last suggestion, of course, was blown up by the emails themselves. . .

[I]n the larger scheme of nonstop lies coming from Trump and the White House — including about the Russia probe — signing off on this statement might seem like a routine lie, at least relatively speaking.

Whatever the legal relevance of this email chain turns out to be, this is the first time we have concrete confirmation of the Trump campaign’s willingness, or even eagerness, to collude with Russia’s efforts to tip the election, one that involved his son, son-in-law (Jared Kushner), and then-campaign chair (Paul Manafort). If the Times’ reporting is accurate, Trump is now directly implicated in an active effort to mislead the country about concrete, known facts that illustrate beyond doubt his campaign’s eagerness to conspire with Russia’s efforts to sabotage our democracy.

This is the case, at a minimum. And it is plausible that lots more will be coming out about these collusion efforts. But the president’s and White House’s handling of this chapter suggests they are hoping to lie their way through it all, one day at a time, one lie at a time, and don’t have any real way to cope with just how serious it is likely to become."

Compared to searches for other terms, "[l]ike, say, barbecue grilling, the U.S. Constitution or Taylor Swift . . . treason [was] more popular on the Web than any of those topics — . . . , for the first time ever."

UPDATE VIII: "Donald Trump Jr. just shared emails that appear to confirm he knew about Russia's intent to help his father win before he took a meeting with a Russian lawyer.

The New York Times reported — and Donald Trump Jr. appeared to confirm — that he agreed to a meeting with a Russian lawyer who had damaging information on Hillary Clinton after getting an email that the Russian government was trying to help his father win the election."

"Last night, the New York Times reported: 'Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.'"

UPDATE III: After Trump accepted Rutin word that Russia did hack the election, "Trump wrote: 'Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded … and safe.'

This drew immediate ridicule and scorn from across the political spectrum."

UPDATE II: And like the meeting with Vnesheconombank, or VEB, which was no normal bank,the meeting was with someone, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who "represents business executives close to the Russian government and is a leading opponent of sanctions imposed because of Russian human rights abuses — sanctions that are also opposed by Vladimir Putin."

"Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged Sunday that he met with a Russian lawyer who had promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton in June 2016.

The news, which was first reported by the New York Times, represents the most direct suggestion to date of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and it is the first indication that someone from President Trump's inner circle met with Russians during the campaign. Trump Jr. also brought then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law and now-top White House adviser Jared Kushner to the meeting.

But the information isn't just troubling because it suggests the Trump campaign sought out the help of Russians to win the presidency. It also contradicts a number of claims made by the White House, the campaign and Trump Jr. himself — claims made as recently as this weekend. For an administration and campaign that have repeatedly denied contact with Russians and had their denials blow up in their faces, it's yet another dubious chapter."

"Trump is a 'unique' politician because he doesn’t speak like one, according to Jennifer Sclafani, an associate teaching professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Linguistics.

'He is interesting to me linguistically because he speaks like everybody else,' said Sclafani, who has studied Trump’s language for the past two years. 'And we’re not used to hearing that from a president. We’re used to hearing somebody speak who sounds much more educated, much smarter, much more refined than your everyday American.' . .

Sclafani, who recently wrote a book set to publish this fall titled 'Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity,' said Trump has used language to 'create a brand' as a politician.

'President Trump creates a spectacle in the way that he speaks,' she said. 'So it creates a feeling of strength for the nation, or it creates a sense of determination, a sense that he can get the job done through his use of hyperbole and directness.'

The features of Trump’s speech patterns include a casual tone, a simple vocabulary and grammar, repetitions, hyperbole and sudden switches of topics, according to Sclafani.

As for the criticism that Trump sounds erratic when he changes subjects in the middle of a speech or sentence, Sclafani said that “this is something that we all do in everyday speech.”

'It’s just unusual to hear it from a president speaking in a public, formal context,' she added."

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